Maoyuu Maou Yuusha – 04

「そんなことになったら勇者に噛みついてやる！」 (Sonna Kotoni Nattara Yuusha ni Kamitsuite Yaru!)
“If That Happens, I’ll Take a Bite Out of the Hero!”

This episode hit its high note early with the impressive negotiations between Maou and Seinen Shounin, but after that I was feeling the lack of Maou x Yuusha. May the distance make their hearts grow fonder…even if it doesn’t appear to be doing that right now. Yuusha, you doutei baka!

Negotiating with Seinen Shounin

I knew this negotiation was going to be a serious one as soon as I saw the Alliance merchants rolling up. Compared to the Church, the Alliance has been painted as a menacing force from the beginning, and they did little to dispel that this time. Negotiations that feature masked mercenaries skulking in the woods and vengeful ghosts floating unknown above them? Talk about tense.

So this time it was corn. There were two–no, three things I found really interesting about these negotiations. First was that Maou actually told them her ultimate goal. To admit that she wants a cessation of hostilities without victory is heretical, because it amounts to “giving up” in many people’s eyes. That is, of course, nonsense – there is nothing wiser than quitting intelligently, such as when you realize the endeavor you’re engaged in is a costly, bloody dead-end (literally). Yet that’s what people think, so coming out and saying it was risky.

Second was that Maou called Seinen Shounin out on his true nature, and he agreed. The pious, jingoistic stuff he spouts is all bullshit – before being a human or a believer, he is a merchant above all else. I can respect that single-minded drive and absolute awareness as to what’s important to him, even while I hate what it could drive him to do. The pursuit of profit is not evil, but the pursuit of profit at the expense of all else? Dangerous, as the Alliance showed with their mercenaries in the woods. Luckily such clear desires make it easy for someone like Maou to make use of them, where she can bend their selfishness towards better ends. Also, Seinen Shounin has enough self-awareness to avoid doing something irrational. Such people are very useful, even as they remain dangerous.

Third is when Seinen Shounin finally one-upped Maou. I knew love would be her answer to his question (and her strongest of bonds), but hearing him instantly propose? How marvelous! At first I suspected he did it solely to get one over her, but I think that was only part of it. Seinen Shounin found her weakness, a chink in her armor, and he wouldn’t be a successful merchant if he didn’t exploit that. Plus, the thought of partnering with such a formidable woman (and a beautiful one too, even in that gaudy hat) was undoubtedly on his mind. He’ll be back…even if he has no chance to win.

A bonus: I couldn’t help but laugh when Ratsuwan Kaikei (lit: Shrewd Accountant, Tachibana Shinnosuke) was surprised that Maou was trying to sell an idea. Of course she was! Though most don’t realize it, that’s all any of us really sell. You don’t sell people the apple or the house or the brand-new gadget, but the feeling it gives, the happiness they receive, or the story they can tell their friends and family. The product or service is merely a means to that end. Maou is, once again, ahead of her time…though Seinen Shounin is keeping up admirably well. Clever boy.

Lonely Without Yuusha

With Maou and Yuusha not directly interacting this episode, most of the rabu-rabu fun came from Maou being lonely without him. First of all, Meido Chou giving Maou extra flak about her useless meat was just hilarious! I love how she takes her nervousness out on her master (and sometimes just for shits and giggles). The rest of her loneliness just tore at my heart though. It seemed so…so needless.

I’m conflicted on Yuusha this episode. Part of it is because I’m a fair bit more experienced than him, so the answer to his problems is as clear to me as it was to Meido Chou: talk to her. That’s what she was saying with that “everything about you belongs to my master” speech. If I have to say it a thousand times I will, but communication is at the heart of any healthy relationship, and it’s better to just get it out there and talk to her than worry by yourself, you baka doutei!

That said, I was fascinated to learn what Yuusha originally thought he would be doing by joining forces with Maou, and how his feelings of unease over what he could do for her still linger. Yuusha is a warrior, a soldier, and a soldier is trained to fight. Yet Maou is a politician, and a good one at that, and a good politician’s job is to make it so their soldiers don’t have to fight if at all possible. Though a resort, force should always be the last one! While this is common sense to many of our present day country’s armed forces, this is not so to those in Yuusha’s time. He is with Maou for later, for “just in case”, and because she does love him. But he’s restless, feeling useless…this I can all understand. It still doesn’t excuse the fact that he should just talk to Maou, but it’s understandable at least.

Looking Ahead

Speaking of crappy politicians, the human world is proving that they still have plenty of those. There’s another senseless war brewing, so it looks like we may get a little action after all. With Yuusha looking like he’ll finally appear in front of Maou again, maybe we’ll get back to the rabu-rabu too? I hope so!

tl;dr:@StiltsOutLoud – Tense negotiations net Maou a new ally & a new suitor. Meanwhile, Yuusha is still conflicted as a new war brews. All in a day’s work #Maoyuu

Random thoughts:

A subtle thing, but I liked how Maou openly spoke about how her clothes were to give her a better negotiating position. Does calling out such a thing lessen its power? Not really. Everyone knows the game, so by openly stating it she shows how savvy she is. That means she has to perform at that level, but so long as she backs up her bullshit it’s only an advantage…and if she can’t, she would have been screwed anyway.

Yuusha is popular with some very strange women. Does he have a charm spell on or something? Better watch out, Yuusha. That doesn’t always end well. (spoiler alert!)

An armada of 200 warships holding 7000 people. Is it just me, or does that sound like a normal scrape by comparable historical standards? As sad as that is.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the coming conflict were some of the character’s reactions. The Fuyu no Ouji (lit: Prince of Winter, Hirakawa Daisuke) showed himself to be a firm idealist, while his butler Rou Yumihei (lit: Old Archer, Ginga Banjou) played the pragmatist. Most impressive to me though was Meido Ane. She wants to learn to fight? There is iron in that girl’s spine, and a damn good head on her shoulders. I look forward to the role she’ll continue to play in this story, which I have a feeling will be outsized for a meido…though really, the same could be said about Meido Chou as well. Viva la meidos!

WTF!? They didn’t show the battle with the Fire Dragon!?!? That’s BULLSHIT! That was the moment I was waiting for! The Hero finally got to kick some ass in the demon world, and they show absolutely NONE OF IT!? I just don’t get it. Did the LN also not elaborate on Hero’s trip to the demon world? It doesn’t just detail Hero excelling at what he does best(because up til that point, we couldn’t gauge how powerful he really is, even when he mentions S Arctic General in ep 3), but it shows his way of being of use to Demon Queen and the trials he had to go through during this time. Also, they skipped the introduction to Dragon Princess, and she’s supposedly one of the major-minor characters in the story.

This show is failing in my eyes. Am I still going to watch it? Probably…for now. But I am SORELY disappointed in this ep due to the lack of the Hero’s perspective of what’s going on in the demon world.

I concur. I wondered what direction this show would take. The LN was long winded but it gave us all the glorious details. But 4 episodes in I can tell that it’s focusing on the negotiation parts to make Yuusha seem more useless. That’s unforgivable. If this show leaves out all the “good stuff” that made me stick with the LN then that’s just BS. I even found myself YAWNING this time!

Hate to say that I agree. The negotiation got full detail, but the action got a mere mention. This was supposed to be where we see Yuusha in full-action for the first time and realize that he really is as cool and competent as Maou, just in a different way. Instead, we get him hiding in a bench, and only know part of what he did from letters. That’s pretty dumb. I love Maou, but we already know she’s great, she doesn’t need this much of the limelight.

It’s SHAFT so its no telling. That can’t talk themselves through that event since it was a turning point – but it still SHAFT so I can totally see them doing just that. So far, this show has been a game commentary.

I support the idea that budget and duration of the show are the reasons why we will not see the little fightings, we will see only the important battles and I see are sighted in the opening.

This is a great shame not to see Yuusha fight and watch the world of demons, but at least we have the LNovel and manga versions are very good so that we illustrate these battles, the manga is where I mainly read the story.

Your work is great aniki-Stilts, really it’s great that you’re the one posting on this anime.

About Yuusha, their behavior is normal for a young man, inexperienced in relationships and being only a warrior. It is something that is fixed with time to mature, as there is love there is hope.

Do not put another Yuusha insecurity was his lifetime? Because Maou as demon could to live longer than him as a human, and therefore a relationship between them would be painful, as he would age and die long before Maou. This is what I read the manga, I would appreciate knowing if I’m wrong or I’m missing something.
I apologize if I fail to make this last as spoiler and annoying someone.

I was thinking there was something a little off about the flow this episode, and I guess that was it. After (or before?) the exciting negotiation, there was supposed to be some exciting adventures with Yuusha, but there weren’t. I don’t know if it’s the right choice, not being a LN or manga reader, but that’s always the danger of adaptations…not enough time to fit in all the little frilly bits that truly bring the story to life. Sad, but understandable.

I don’t get what they did by leaving out all that Yuusha, except that all of those exploits would have easily taken over the story. However, downplaying it is just a travesty & making him hide in a bench is just plain dumb. They have to be counting on most of their viewers not being LN readers because they really did cut the story in half for this cour.

Yuusha actually kept the Demon would in check during all this time which indirectly allowed the humans to regroup to retake the island. They spent 20 seconds trying to explain something as big as that & half the episode on corn that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans until much further down the road.

I was rather disappointed that they cut out Yuusha’s adventures too. Not only because of lack of action, but because it would’ve been a good chance for us to see how things actually are in the demon world and to see him work his way without Maou. :(

Just how is ARM relatively unknown. They’ve done Queen’s Blade, Ikkitousen, Elfen Lied, Estetica & a ton of H-anime. They’ve only helped with non-ecchi stuff until now so it’s understandable that they would fub this up doing it alone. I just didn’t think they would kill off Yuusha right off the bat. However, they are out of their league with a show like this. They’re very much holding back the fanservice since it hardly existed at all in the LN. I don’t consider what has been shown up to now to be any kind of meat show, if you take their track record into account.

They’ve only helped with non-ecchi stuff until now so it’s understandable that they would fub this up doing it alone. I just didn’t think they would kill off Yuusha right off the bat. However, they are out of their league with a show like this.

I always thought that the studio was primarily responsible for visual (drawing), audio (recording) and production (putting all together) while the director & maybe producer are primarily responsible for the story line (i.e. story adaptation, what gets cut, anything added etc.). Even in terms of visual/audio, the director has the final say.

Accordingly, I would think the the director, not the studio, is at fault for cutting scenes out/adding new ones. Am I wrong about this (serious question)?

Directors & producers are known in-name only. There are tons of middlemen that work with the show way before it gets to the main studio yet for some reason, the studio usually takes the brunt of the credit since they are the end result of what we see. But it is a two-way street. They also take the fall for problems that they had no function of, unless the exe-producer(s) is “more” well-known than the studio. To simplify things, most of us just call out the studio – they are usually the first name we see plastered on the mess anyway.

Wow… so… they just took four or five chapters of Yuusha being awesome as Kuro Kishi and reduced it to a minute of reading letters… Sure, this frees up a good amount of screen time, but the action fans are gonna be none to happy… Plus we missed Great Dragon Princess’s introduction, and she’s awesome!! XD

Otherwise, I agree that Yuusha was questionable here. When he can come home literally every day, it does feel needless to see Maou pining away. This doesn’t exactly feel like a productive way to resolve how useless he feels in their relationship, and with Teleport he can still go do her work in the Demon World just as well as if he stopped off to see her once a week, which he’s basically doing, except without actually seeing her… so yeah, he might as well be throwing a tantrum by saying Maou loves him too much, but he won’t be happy without blowing stuff up for her… and not coming home when he can… because he wants her to see him as useful and not a backup plan… which is a misunderstand that would be cleared up if he’d spoken to her once in the last six months… because he wants to be missed and be useful, but…. okay, my head hurts. Yuusha, you fool.

Oh, he conducts. He tears through the Demon World looking for Magician, while checking off the list of demon generals that were misbehaving as they fall back in line after one fight with him, finding a good amount of other trouble along the way, saves a few random people, and almost has a feisty dragon mistress forced on him after fighting her father and promising to clear out a human garrison. It’s good stuff! Hope we actually get a conversation with Magician next time, cause she’s great, too, and she didn’t even get an appearance!

Totally agree – Great Dragon Princess rocks! Definitely prefer the manga version of her (no spoiler).

Yuusha’s not the sharpest spear on the rack when it comes to relationships, but I think the anime’s making him look worse than in the manga. He does some smart thinking a couple of times as Dark Knight – which of course wasn’t shown. Now that I think about it, Head Maid seems like almost a bigger star in the anime than Yuusha.

I don’t know why, but until this episode it didn’t hit me that Maou seems to be the actual protagonist instead of Yuusha. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me before as shes been the one to move the story up till now and not Yuusha. O and speaking of Yuusha after last week he still continues being an idiot.

Clearly this is not a shonen anime, but those fights are great for history, the development of the hero, showing the world of demons and important secondary characters. One can feel and understand more Yuusha as main character. It’s a shame not to see them both for fans of the action or the development of the story and characters.

The issue isn’t the lack of action scenes – the issue is that almost all of Yuusha’s activities between Ep 3 and Ep 4 were boiled down to a 30 second flashback, those activities consisting heavily of fights.Show Spoiler ▼

Even worse…he’s explicitly going to do next to nothing for several more Eps. Yeah, SHAFT just omitted half of what Yuusha does during the story.

The complaint is valid. Romance is expected to be done well in non-romance stories, even if it’s not the main focus. Sure, no one should expect shounen-style action, but a few fights that further explore Yuusha’s character would be great…and thus leaving them out is sad. Though as I said above, it’s understandable due to time constraints.

Well now we have corn/maize production. Let us jump start this world out of the global food crisis and into the modern era where the entire food economy is reliant on one major source of food. Wonder when we will die off as corn/maize is destroyed by some biological weapon or super bug.

I like her way of thinking this as a business client. The flow of goods and money, loss and profit, and that profit-loss rationality is their (well at least for the Alliance) common language, or as she said, the 2nd strongest bond that exists between this heaven and earth. Also how faithful she is toward contracts

The fact they skipped all of Yuusha’s trip to the demon world makes me wonder if action is even a genre of this anime.It was very disappointing.

On the other hand Yuusha’s dilemma isn’t that strange, since Stilts and a few others already explained it, I’ll just stick to adding few things.For one, Yuusha not wanting to talk to Maou is also understandable, much like how Maou didn’t want to rely on Yuusha when the Seinen Shounin showed up, Yuusha also doesn’t want to burden Maou with his own feelings of uncertainty – communication is a essential part of a relationship, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are instances you don’t tell your partner that something is bothering you because your worried that that knowledge itself might burden her/him.And considering Maou is the brains of the two, it’s partly Maou’s fault for not foreseeing this situation – albeit, it is kind of predictable, if someone whose been fighting for the greater part of his life is suddenly asked to stay around without doing anything productive, obviously, he wouldn’t be comfortable.

I am getting the impression that this will basically be an another Spice and Wolf with very few new features or differences, while it might be enjoyable for fans of those aspects, for me it’s less enjoyable by the week.

Yes, the last bit leaves a lot to be talked about (for non-manga/LN readers anyway). “Am I really human now?”, even though she has learned a lot (actually more than normal person) would and people around the village treated her really well(they didn’t know she was a serf before, I think), she still has that in the back of her mind.

Maybe the real question for her is “What is the requirement for someone to be a human?”, if she doesn’t know the answer to that, she won’t be able to answer the first question as well.

Yup yhe horns are removable, a part of traditional demon king outfit… it was lampshaded in very first episode!
I guess greenhouse was needed to try and grow corn in cold southern climate…
I guess Meido Ane will become more sure of herself when she learns to fight under the tutelage of the Onna Kishi – after all it is by force of the arms that serfs were forced into their condition.

So the new crusade/invasion is quite big one, even by our historical standards, even if light on the manpower side.

It didnt surprise me tha Meido Ane would want to learn to fight – after all, serfs were forced into their condition at the point of knightly swords, so to speak, and many tims in our history rebelled, usually with bad result but occasionally, such as Swiss, with success.

ewok40k: Lepanto: 212 vs 251 ships, with 28000 vs 31000 soldiers (not counting oarsmen and sailors) So the new crusade/invasion is quite big one, even by our historical standards, even if light on the manpower side.

Depends upon which RL historical period you consider. 200 ships is a lot (more than the Spanish Armada) for the Late Middle Ages / (very) Early Renaissance but relatively small-very small in comparison to other times. For example, the Persian Fleet during the Greco-Persian wars was around 600 or more (number disputed but 600 ships a relatively conservative figure). Those figures pale in comparison to the Normandy landings in WWII (“D-Day”): Invasion fleet = 6,939 vessels (1,213 warships) with 195,700 naval personnel; Landing force (all five beaches) = 156,115 soldiers.

And yeah, 7,000 soldiers is tiny regardless of what period in history you consider. That being said, I always took that number as emphasizing the huge burden carried by the the small Southern Nations, like the Winter Nation. They constantly battle the demons but never have enough native soldiers to truly win. The Central Nations may send ship after ship, but only if there’s a “Crusade” (which I suspect happens when the Southern Nations armies reach the point of exhaustion) do the Central Nations send troops (99% sure that’s correct).

You’re entirely correct about serfs being “drafted” at sword point to form the back-bone of Middle Age armies, but keep in mind that applied to MALE serfs, not female. That’s what’s impressive about Meido Ane’s willingness to learn to fight. Despite all she’s accomplished since becoming a maid, she still feels that she hasn’t contributed her fair share and is willing to fight even though that isn’t expected of her.

I was more referring to the feudal/serfdom system being enforced by military might of the nobility, but you of course are right. I think that Meido ane still fears someone can eventually come and force her back into servitude unless she can defend herself (and imouto!).
I chose Lepanto as reference point since it seems to be closest thing to the (a)historical era of the series. I could as well bring the exploits of Cortez and Pizarro with barely few hundreds men conquering ancient empires of America, but this would be as distorting as the Salamis which was definitely in another epoch. And WW2 is industrial era warfare with much vaster population to support armies to boot…
Also, notably, Lepanto was a similar coalition effort where Venice and Papal state were supported by Spanish Crown, and even German mercenaries. Considering entire effort was to relieve besieged Venetian colony, I guess Spain and Hapsburg Austria were playing the “Central Nations” here – though neither Venetia nor Church not lacked wealth of their own…

@ewok40k: Sorry if I gave you the wrong idea – Lepanto is a good analogy (certainly more similar in context than WWII). I just thought it useful to have more than one example to give those unfamiliar with this topic a better idea in terms progression from “ancient” to modern times (i.e what constitutes a “big” armada has greatly changed). In terms of army size, conquistadors aside, I still think 7,000 is small. That’s not even two Roman Legions (normally Rome had 25-35 permanent ones standing). Middle Age armies were not big by modern standards, but typically they were much larger than that.

I agree that Meido Ane does have some lingering fears about returning to serfdom. Still, I also think she regrets not contributing/moving forward (i.e. becoming “human”) as much as the others, and that is her primary motivation here.

Medieval armies varied wildly in size, from mere hundreds to few dozens of thousands – with biggest battles rarely involving about 20-30,000 on each side. At Agincourt and Crecy British forces were about equal to the fictional one here. Biggest trouble was logistics, Romans could afford the legions due to the roads system which allowed easy resupply, and naval hegemony on Mediterranean which allowed naval resupply. All that was lost in the fall of the Empire, though… I guess the small size of the fictional force in the series is result of difficulties in supplying them in the poor southern lands. Economy wise, all the gold supplied by central nations cant buy more food than local economy can provide – and the lack of long term storable food is another factor… I guess Maou will elaborate on that matter yet! I expect a great deal of such details.

With all the above said, the 7,000 troops makes sense (especially since they’re planning to fight over a small island) even if it still feels small. I think the comparison to the Persian fleet in number of ships is more valid, though…from what I remember (I’m not at home, so I can’t check the episode), I don’t think these were giant Spanish galleons we’re talking about here. A lot of much smaller ships will probably be involved.

I’m a big fan of Spice and Wolf, and was expecting a lot from this show. So far I’ve been very disappointed.

The economics is very simplistic, and we’re not provided with any real background for the conflict. We still hardly know anything about the demons other than what we’ve seen of the Demon Queen herself.

I wasn’t expecting big epic battle scenes in every episode from this series, but I was expecting to get great storytelling about politics, economics, subversion of fantasy tropes or other such things. So far the show has been more about useless meat and moe fanservice.

Still looking forward to the scene with the Head Maid losing her arm in the opening.
Looking at the comments and wondering about the people that watch this series for action is just another thing to do in the meantime.

I’m really getting the same feeling as when I watched Harry Potter movies. Adaptation from a great novel have to be selective of what it’s going to present; Some just does it better than the other, but most are just disappointing.

Maoyuu started strong as an intelligent anime like Spice&Wolf, but it has turned out to be much less charming. The whole thing seems so rushed (“six months have passed” “oh it’s fall now”) and the protagonist makes an effort to NOT MEET THE FEMALE LEAD!? What? The team has made progress yes but I haven’t seen nearly as much character interactions as I’d want to see. Introducing cool, likable characters isn’t enough if they aren’t going to make them do something on screen. (The Oh-I-spent-tons-building-that-greenhouse-offscreen doesn’t count, Onna Kishi)

For someone like me who’s not convinced enough to take time to read the LN, I think I’ll never get how Maoyuu is a great story just from watching the anime alone (I still believe it is). So the anime’s a fail at this point for me.

I personally wouldn’t call it “fail” as much as “disappointing”. I do suggest at least trying the manga (the LN is barely translated at this point – not even the entire first volume) if you truly belive the story is great. When the season preview was listed on RC, I posted that “as long as the director stays true to the source material (which for me is the manga since LN translation is on hiatus), the show should be a success.” It’s close, but not close enough IMO..

I agree that the anime seems a bit rushed, but not for the same reason as you mention. As posted in earlier episode comments and below, there were “questionable” cuts and alterations made to the story which IMO make it seem rushed at the expense of character development and quite a bit of humor. Given the OP “preview” scenes, my suspicion is that the anime plans to cover a lot of material – more than I expected in order to reach what the director believes is a “good” stopping point.

In the case of Yuusha “avoiding” Maou, there’s a valid reason for that. Yuusha is struggling with the fact that despite being “Gary-Stu” in terms of combat, those abilities are of relatively little use in furthering Maou’s plans. Sure he can help her by settling things down in the demon world (sadly not shown), but he’s not much help (so he thinks) in terms helping Maou advance the human world to the point to where war with the demons isn’t an economic necessity. In that sense he’s gone from playing the “starring role” to “supporting cast.” What he fails to realize (and Head Maid tries to point out) is that beyond his fighting prowess, he provides important emotional support to Maou.

One if the things I got from this episode that doesn’t seem to be mentioned was Hero’s concern over his mortality compared to Maou. It really reminded me of the last real conflict standing between Holo and Lawrence being together.

I agree with you except for the last part about the Alliance having a force “waiting” in the wings. It’s a business transaction. A FEW guards is one thing, but Apple, Inc. doesn’t bring a private army to its merger talks let alone use it if negotiations break down. I understand why it was there (add tension), but disagree that it was necessary in the first place.

In general, the whole added “haunted castle” (i.e. ghosts) aspect is something I can do without. I can only guess it was added to “subtly” remind people that Maou is a demon (even though her name is “Maou” >_>) since for most of the story she (and Head Maid) look like “regular” humans.

Reducing the training sessions also eliminated some character development for the Youngster’s as well for Female Knight. I really hope that there’s some sort of looong flashback next episode which essentially covers the Dark Knight’s travels in the demon world. Not only did I like those chapters in the manga, but there’s some important background/character introduction as well.

I’m really really sorry, and I never expected this too happen, but this is *drop* for me. Because I like the original too much, and unfortunately, this anime doesn’t work for me. It reduces the wonderful story and characters to hurried sketches and lifeless shadows. 12 episodes is just too little to properly do it.

o The story has removed 90% of the humorous small banter between the characters which has an important task: It makes me like them and care for them.

o Stripping important context completely messes up the characters. Take the scene where Female Knight cuts the sword to pieces: In the original, she only does this to teach the youngsters a lesson who openly rebelled against having a mere girl train them. In the anime, she looks like an idle braggart, because the context was completely omitted.

o Demon Queen is off. Where are her self-doubts and worries? Hero is off. A particularly wimpy version. Female Knight is completely off. Where is her positive disposition and humor? Big sister maid is off. She wants to run and fight? Are you kidding me?? Having prior knowledge of the material hurts, because what I know (and hold dear) is incompatible with the anime version. Not knowing the show might be much better.

o Completely omitting the Hero’s efforts as Dark Knight? Seriously? By stripping this, they fail to make the viewers understand the nature of the demon world.

Sorry. This one is a failing grade for me, because I don’t want this anime to pollute my own impression of the MaoYuuverse any more. I hope that in 3-4 years someone competent with a proper budget and at least 2 seasons makes another attempt.

I loved the manga a lot more than the anime, and agree with everything you said.
But I guess I’m just more tolerant, hell I’m still watching Little Busters just to see how even the visual novel is better animated.
When you say original, do you mean the novel or the manga though?

Given this show only has 12 episodes to tell its story, I suppose the rushed pacing shown is understandable.

That said, I wonder– how do the Japanese companies determine how many episodes a show should get? Does it depend on how well-known the source material is? How famous the animating studio is? Or is it the amount of budget the company/studio can collect for the show?

I’ve always wondered how certain quieter-themed shows can get up to 20+ eps, while certain complex epic-themed shows like this get only 12-13 eps. Is it because the quieter show has content the Japanese target audience likes more?

Well, you can read the first two of eleven “scrolls” for LN volume 01, but for now that’s it. The group, Vermilliongrey, who is (was?) translating the LN recently posted: There will be no more releases until the entire novel is translated…we will release the novel in its entirety when it’s done and polished to an obscene amount. In addition, they are looking for another Chinese translator.

So far, five volumes of the LN have been released. Assuming Vermilliongrey does in fact wait until the novel is finished before releasing any more English translations, it’s going to be a long, long wait indeed barring translation from another group or an official English publication.

You might consider trying one (or both) of the manga adaptations instead.